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Hellbender: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (23rd August 2025). |
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The Film
 Cheval Noir (Best Actress): Zelda Adams (winner), Sandro Forte Award (Best Motion Picture Score): John Adams (winner), and Cheval Noir (Best Film): Zelda Adams, John Adams, and Toby Poser (nominee) - Fantasia Film Festival, 2021 Best Acting: Zelda Adams (winner) and Best Film : Zelda Adams, John Adams, and Toby Poser (nominee) - Mar del Plata Film Festival, 2021 Due to an autoimmune disease, teenage Izzy (Zelda Adams) has lived isolated on a mountain with her mother (Tobey Poser) for as long as she can remember. Her mother is not only her sole caregiver but also her best friend, writing and playing songs with her in their basement rock band and picking up macabre inspirational knickknacks for her daughter during her solo trips to town. While her mother is away, Izzy wanders the woods of their vast private property. One day, she is startled by a lost hiker (John Adams) who reveals to Izzy that he is visiting his niece who lives nearby before her mother appears and sends her away. Curious about other people and wanting friends despite her mother's claims that she is too ill to be around other people, Izzy spies Amber (Lulu Adams) who has a habit of sneaking into the pool of a well-to-do neighbor who rarely uses his country residence. Friendly Amber puts Izzy at ease, seeming impressed when she tells her that she is in a rock band, and invites her to come back in a couple days for a small party with friends. Unbeknownst to her mother, Izzy keeps her date with Amber and her friends and starts to question how sick she really is when medical school-bound AJ (Rinzin Thonden) informs her that the autoimmune disease her mother told her she has is usually found only in boys and has a high infant mortality rate, but then Amber gives her the chance to show up rocker friend Ingrid (Khenzom) on the drums. When Izzy drinks a tequila shot with a live worm, however, she starts to feel sick, which ends badly for the owner of the house (Rob Figueroa) when he catches her on his property. Returning home, Izzy demands the truth about her supposed illness from her mother who reveals that neither of them are entirely normal, and Izzy's coming-of-age is about to get as gory and violent as it is cool. The fifth feature film co-directed by John Adams and his wife Toby Poser, and the third jointly directed with their daughter Zelda Adams as "The Adams Family" – following The Deeper You Dig and The Hatred – Hellbender is a coming-of-age drama crossed with an American strain folk horror with references to the Puritan witch hangings combined with an entirely original and feminine mythos that as anarchic and punk as the characters' music. The script is slight but never feels underdeveloped, giving just enough backstory and carrying the rest of the narrative through the chemistry between mother and daughter as the latter's keeping her daughter in ignorance of her powers through deception has parallels in dysfunctional relationships between parents and children while Izzy exploring her powers and finding enjoyment in its darker aspects are not unlike teenage rebellion and the general pulling away that so frightens some parents. The musical interludes featuring original songs by the Adams family and the montages they underline feel more organic to the storytelling style and less like self-promotion, and the lack of communication between parent and child allows the narrative to move rather fitfully and the tone to shift abruptly from moments of tenderness and joy spiked with black humor to chilly silences and horrific discoveries. The black humor extends to the horrific ending with a wonderfully cheeky final line of dialogue. Including Hellbender, the trajectory of the Adams Family's horror filmography shows an increasing DIY mastery of the new wave of minimalist, deliberately-paced, intimate horror films and it will be interesting to see what they tackle next. 
Video
Picked up by Shudder, Hellbender was released on DVD in the U.S. and U.K. (via Acorn's distribution deal with Shudder) in 2022. Arrow previously released the Adams Family's earlier film The Deeper You Dig in 2020 – first as a two-disc limited edition (U.K. link) with the earlier The Hatred and a single-disc standard edition (U.K. link) – and have followed it up with a dual-territory Blu-ray upgrade of Hellbender. Shot on Canon DSLR cameras, Hellbender's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.90:1 widescreen image has a deliberate "cinematic" softness combined with grading that contrasts warm and well-saturated interiors and a few summer exteriors with stark, almost blindingly white snowy landscapes and supernaturally-pale skin that seems more due to the grading than any physical make-up effects. Some of the more obvious digital effects are forgivable for there artifice while the extras reveal a handful of effects that went unnoticed while viewing the film. 
Audio
The sole audio option is an LPCM 2.0 stereo track that suits the film's predominantly intimate tone and seems up to the task of the moments of busier sound design and enveloping music. Optional English SDH subtitles are included. 
Extras
The Shudder and Acorn DVDs featured some behind the scenes material and music videos which Arrow has ported over along with some newly-commissioned extras. First up is a new audio commentary by filmmakers Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Lulu Adams who reveal that the film's primary location was the house from The Deeper You Dig finally restored and much of the surrounding woodland offering up found shooting opportunities including the derelict meth lab house, and the paranoid degree of "keep out" signs marking their property left by previous owners while the extras not only included school friends of the daughters but also theater actors, fellow soccer players, and soccer moms (oddly appropriate as persecutors of witches in the opening sequence). They also reveal that the shooting started shortly before COVID restrictions and early scenes framing Zelda and Lulu separately were because the latter had not been with them during the summer and Poser had respiratory issues (Poser also researched the disease her character would use as a cover story for keeping her daughter away from the rest of the world). The family affair nature of the film is further explored in pointing out various relatives in smaller roles as well as humorous anecdotes about carrying their cloaks around and capturing shots on the fly when a background inspired even in the presence of onlookers. They also make references to other films or shorts that have probably had festival play but are not widely available along with their current production Mother of Flies which seems to have some thematic parallels based on the IMDb entry.  Also new is "From the Forest She Rises" (12:37), a video essay by filmmaker Jen Handorf who discusses the use of the forest setting and the "cabin in the woods" as liminal spaces for unmaking and transformation in the context of horror films and specifically films about witches – as well as the work of structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss – with the "threat" not lurking within the location but the primal forces that it unleashes. Ported from the DVDs is "The Visual FX of Hellbender by Black Magic Tricks" (10:13) narrated by effects supervisor Trey Lindsay who gives a rundown of the film's digital effects work along with behind the scenes footage (6:54) that shows some of the mishaps on set as well as a look at the make-up effects workshop, drone testing, and the shooting of some of the images of the characters' ancestors buried under various overlays and contrasty grading in the finished film. Also ported were four music videos of songs heard in the film: "Lovely" (2:42), "Drive" (2:03), "Black Sky" (2:24), and "Lovely" (2:42). Not ported over were a short blooper reel, a Tiktok video, and a promo for the family's production company. Also new to this release is "Fort Worden" (0:58), a short film by Zelda Adams shot during the production, the film's theatrical trailer (1:53), and a trailer for The Deeper You Dig (2:14). 
Packaging
The limited edition comes with a slipcover, a reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Beth Morris and original artwork by Sister Hyde, and an illustrated collector's booklet. The booklet starts with "filmmakers' statement" by Poser who defines the film as a convergence of the family band, "a real-life genetic who-dunnit" – Poser having learned on her mother's deathbed that she was conceived via sperm donor and her feelings of having been deceived and betrayed her entire life – and their isolating experience of "life in the time of COVID." In "Growing Up is Hell: The Monstrosity of Coming of Age in Hellbender" by Natasha Ball cites the usual "horror of adolescence" films like Carrie and Ginger Snaps – along with the more recent Perpetrator (recently released by Arrow in the U.S. and U.K.) noting that Izzy is not rejected but cut off entirely from "the teenage experience," the mother-daughter dynamics of the film and the repression underlying the "cool mum" persona, and the intermingling of "desire, hunger and consumption." In "Spring Eats Winter, Winter Eats Fall...: Analysing Maternal Anxieties and Complexities within Hellbender" by Kat Hughes – who notes that horror is actually a more recent turn in the creative work of the Adams family whose earlier works were dramas – and examines the film's depictions of female coming of age and motherhood in how it seems outwardly to counter negative psychoanalytical depictions like the Electra complex while revealing the repressive tactics underlying her encouragement of her daughter.
Overall
Including Hellbender, the trajectory of the Adams Family's horror filmography shows an increasing DIY mastery of the new wave of minimalist, deliberately-paced, intimate horror films and it will be interesting to see what they tackle next.
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